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Palm trees, beach and glamor - the everyday life in MIAMI BEACH. Or maybe completely different?


Ocean drive Miami Beach. Evening atmosphere. A roaring, deep red Corvette Stingray C7 Convertible passes a street-parked sky-blue 1965 Ford Thunderbird, whose white convertible roof has been decoratively tipped to the rear. Behind the wheel of the many open luxury cars, tanned model athletes are sitting in front of muscle bursting T-shirts or Armani suit straps whose laxity can no longer be surpassed.

At best, one or the other of the infinite, at the roadside proud and unapproachable there striding mannequins, who lasciviously emphasize their perfect body through the skin-tight tube dresses and the already irresponsible high heels, can provoke an imperceptible twist of the top-hot head of the noble car owners.

At the roadside, the palm trees sway in the wind, the sinking sun over the nearby sea creates red shades every minute and gives the wide fine beach, but also the many stylish buildings on Ocean Drive an atmospheric touch.

The Art Deco style of the houses with their innumerable nuances of pink, turquoise and sky blue seem to be an obvious part of the dream setting, to which the Cuban rhythms of the live bands of bars and restaurants almost inevitably belong ….

Dream? Wish? Cliche?

No - this version of the OceanDrive in South Beach is really a reality. A skilfully maintained and gladly presented image in which narcissists, once-be-a-star-tourists and a professional advertising industry unconsciously or consciously complement each other wonderfully. How many normal tourists would be disappointed if it were not so as it seems to be. If they could not be part of another glittering world for a few hours and days. But this is how you drive home and are satisfied, because everything is as expected.

And one is inclined to forget that one had to pay up to $ 20 for a parking hour on the drive. That the drink on Ocean Drive cost four times as much as in the best bar or eatery at home. That around you sat never really real stars, but only jazzed up "normalos". And after one or the other, they stretched their necks because somebody told them that there was someone over there who might look like someone else. But maybe he was. Whoever.

And at some point no one can resist the atmosphere of rousing rhythms of Latin American music, flashes of neon neon signs, laughing and dancing people. At the latest after the third Mojito, you feel like you are part of this very special whole, expecting at any moment that the ultralight boys of Miami Vice or CSI Miami will drive up.

Perhaps one is inclined, under the impression of all, to forget that Miami Beach really does not make it easy for you with its ambivalence of positive and not so positive snapshots:

  • Postcard motifs around the beaches en masse, but only attractive for those who do not mind the endless rows of skyscrapers directly behind.

  • A light that is unparalleled and lets the photo professional be rapturous at certain times of the day and is underlined by rapidly changing climatic conditions. Sometimes steel-blue skies, sometimes threatening thunderstorm moods, all the way to the blackness of a gathering hurricane and then again sunbeams breaking through dense cloud banks and soon luring people back to the beaches. Everything within a few hours. Immediately return to torrential rains and storms that can scare even the hard-boiled.

  • South Beach's prestigious mansions, whose idyllic streets are lined with the most beautiful and best-kept palm trees imaginable. But then right in the middle of Miami Beach four- to six-lane streets that are also clogged for hours as the few connecting bridges over to Miami City.

  • An infinite number of supermarkets and restaurants of every category, where there is everything your heart desires. But at prices that are easy to get used to. Quite apart from the typical American ceremonies around the "voluntary" tip - tip rites that are sometimes more than annoying.

  • A sports and entertainment program that will not leave you bored. But, of course, including the most traditional American passions baseball and American football, to which even the seriously endeavored Central Europeans find it difficult to gain access.

  • And then of course the chance to use Miami Beach as a springboard for trips to the rest of Florida. For example, a day or weekend trip to the Keys down to Key West. How beautiful the turquoise waters glitter around the islands. And in Key West, the American even discovers something like his history, and presents it charmingly at Hemingway House, for example. Or you drive over to the Gulf of Mexico, for example around Naples. Where people are still sympathetically simpler and not as big-city behavior as on the east coast. And on the way, of course, the trip by airboat through the Everglades may not be missing - see you later, alligator.

Study of Ernest Hemingway at Hemingway House, Key West.

What is left after 3 months living in Miami Beach? Mixed emotions. You can not escape the fascination, but you also get to know many dark sides of the everyday life of this dream destination. But is not it almost everywhere in the dream locations of this world? And does not that also depend very much on your own expectations and on your own mood and situation?

But does it really matter if the sun goes down deep red, the bodies in intimate embrace move almost unnoticeably to the song of Enrique Iglesias (the singer of this band looks really deceptively similar to him or is he maybe even ...?), The palm trees sway easily in the wind and this Mojito tastes just indescribably good.

© Images and Text TRAVEL-EDITION, Fotolia (#115541528)

 

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